Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-02-11
A LOTTERY BILL AT LAST.

Assemblyman Seymour Carr has intro
duced necessary bill that should become
a law at once, to make more effective the
statute forbidding the aiding of lotteries
by any manner of advertisement, sale of
tickets, etc. The bill proposes to amend
Section 322 of the Penal Code so as to de-
fine advertising" 1t recites that any
kind of publication by reading matter or
in advertising columns in any newspaper,
magazine, book or pamphlet of any tickets
in lotteries for sale, Of the announcement
of lottery schemes, or OF drawings to take
place, or the results of drawings that have
taken place, is advertising a lottery and
aiding the sale of tickets therein. 1t IS
made the duty of District Attorneys to
present any publisher or printer who VIC
lates the law by such publication.
In fact the amendment does not change
the law as now upon the statute books,
except to prevent evasion of it, by the
plea that announcing the result of
drawing is not advertising it. The proof
of this plea being advanced is found in
the fact that newspaper publishers IN Cali
fornia refuse to publish advance notices Of
lotteries, but do print and circulate adver-
tisements of the results of drawings. OF
course everyone knows that this is merely
"whipping the devil around the stump"
When long list of numbers standing op-
posite figures representing dollars, Is pub
lished, with the statement that 1t IS the
report of the regular monthly drawing of
a certain lottery, it does advertise the con-
Germ and all its subsequent monthly or
other drawings. So, too, when jour
nalists, as many of them did in Decem-
Der, 1856, and January, 1887, and
the present month, publish long
accounts of the methods employed
in drawing the Louisiana lottery, they
violated the law, and knew that they did
so. These accounts illustrated with sew
eral pictures to make them more promi-
nent, were all paid for by the lottery con-
Germ, and not one Of the guilty publishers,
if put to it on his honor, will deny that
fact-indeed, all the evidences of these ac-
counts being advertising" are patent on
their faces. Whatever may be the doubt
concerning the printing of results of the
drawings, the reading" accounts are
clearly violations of the law as it now
stands, for they all treated of the monthly
drawings, and defended the methods of the
lottery sharks, Landed the officials of the
lottery generally, and so far as words could
do it, commended these swindling gam
bling concerns, and invited the people to
patronize them.
Mr.. Cars bill strikes at all these
abuses; it aims to give effect to the spirit
of the constitutional prohibition of lotter-
les, and to make certain and unambiguous
the three hundred and twenty sec
ton of the Penal Code Legislators are
sworn to uphold the Constitution and the
laws. They do not dose when, having knowl-
edge of the claim of defect of the law,
through which offenders seek to escape,
they refuse or neglect to prevent such eva
sion by making the lawso clear hatitcan-
not screen any guilty man. They do not
prove true to their oaths when, by silence
and inacti0n, they consent to the nor
enforcement of law, the violation Of
which is fraught with such i'll TO the
people of the State. Probably members
have not looked at the matter in this
light, but we submit that it is legitimate
view. The Legislature is in the nature of
a grand inquest; it is its duty not only to
make needed new law, but to repair any
disclosed defects in existing statutes, and
TO prevent so far as amendment can do ii,
evasion OF express statutes.
Lotteries cannot be set up or drawn in
this State, the Constitution righteously
and sternly prohibiting them but by eva
sion of the laws foreign lotteries come into
the State and sell their tickets, and use
the press to advertise their pernicious
schemes. They cart out Of the State hun
dreds of thousands of dollars annually. in
the promotion of lottery schemes that can
not he drawn in California. How, then,
can any legislator excuse himself for re-
ft,sing or negleeting to put SOP, 50 far as
laws ran do 81. To nractices by those foreign
to the State in which the people Of Cali
fornia are forbidden to indulge? Legs
lators are sworn to maintain and give effect
to Section 20 of Article ". of the funda-